Treasure
by corellian-smuggler
Summary: Han Solo reflects on earned rewards.


**_A/N: Written in defiant protest._**

"Papa? Papa, what's this?"

Han glanced up from his task—cutting the crusts off a treenut butter and jelly sandwich—in search of the voice's owner.

Standing before him in the kitchen was his youngest granddaughter, and even after five years the sight of her still left him reeling, sometimes. His littlest girl with a little girl of her own? He shook his head in wonder—she was a spitting image of her mother, too. Standing there, eyes huge, wispy hair twisted up in a crown of Alderaanian braids, she looked just like her mother had some twenty-five years before. _Twenty-five? _he thought in shock. Where had the time gone?

"Papa?"

Han set aside the sandwich plate and wiped his hands on a dish towel.

"What's what?" he asked curiously, heading around the counter to see what she had. She held it up to him, and it glinted a bit, catching the afternoon light that filtered in through the wide transparisteel windows behind her. She'd been quiet when Han had started making her lunch, playing with her dolls on the living room floor, but she was like that sometimes. A real intense kid—Han liked to joke that he imagined Leia must've been the same way when she was five; he could just picture her seating all her toys around her royal play table with precision and calculation, and the little crease between his granddaughter's eyebrows as she mumbled under her breath to her dolls was indeed so Leia-like that Han had smirked into his caf.

She didn't hold a toy now, though, and he realized with a small amount of exasperation that she must've snuck off while he'd been carefully spreading just the right amount of burbleberry jelly onto her sandwich.

He looked at what she'd found.

"Huh."

Crouching to scoop her up—pretending to throw her just to hear her shriek of delight and ensuing giggle—he set her down to sit on the counter before him.

"Hanna Organa Solo-Antilles, did you go peeping through Grandma and Papa's closet?"

"No!"

Han raised his eyebrows.

"_No?"_ he asked, with exaggerated disbelief. "You didn't? This just magically appeared out there on the caf table, huh?"

"Maybe you put it there and forgot," Hanna said seriously, and Han grinned.

"And maybe _you're_ a tap-dancing nerf."

Hanna scrunched her nose and giggled, and again Han saw his wife and daughter in her youthful face. Hell, she even had some of Wedge in her, though Han would never admit it to him. He was adamant every time he saw his friend that their mutual granddaughter looked 100% Solo.

Before him on the counter, the five-year-old held up her discovery once more.

"Papa, is this a necklace?"

His smile faded as he took it from her little hand, running his thumb over the polished metal.

"Nah, kid, it's not a necklace."

"What is it?"

"It's a medal. It's something you get when you do something real good or brave."

He watched her big Leia-eyes light up.

"Did you do something brave, Papa?"

It hit Han, then, as it sometimes did. In moments like this when the reality of his life seemed to catch up to him. Before his eyes, the decades seemed to melt away, and instead of the weight of the medal in his palm, he felt the weight of it around his neck. There, before him, wry and vibrant and alive, Leia. Leia, who'd insulted him the second she'd met him. Leia, who'd thrown her arms around him in that kriffing trash compactor. Leia, beside whom he'd fled for his life on the Death Star. Who'd attacked his character moments later. That day at the ceremony, the way she'd looked at him, as he'd walked towards her. Expectant, and Han had felt—drawn. Like the pull of a magnet—no. The pull of fate, though he hadn't yet known it. Blind that day to the temple full of rebels, to the triumphant procession. He'd had eyes only for her—mind occupied not by pride in a defeated foe but by the jubilant embrace she'd met him with as he'd run off his ship, her exultant words—_I knew there was more to you than money!_—the smile that tugged the corner of her mouth as she'd set the medal around his neck.

That day, looking into her smart brown eyes, Han had been _altered._

And here, those eyes staring out of the face of their grandkid, her cheeks pink and expression expectant like her grandmother's all those years ago.

"Yeah," he confessed. "Yeah, I guess I did something brave one time. You wanna hear about it?"

Hanna nodded, eyes back on the medal.

"Well, one time Grandma was stuck in a tricky spot."

"Grandma was in trouble?!"

"Yeah—hard to believe, right? But your old grandpa rescued her. There were some real bad people in the galaxy trying to do some real bad things, and we stopped them. So your grandma gave me this medal. Me and your Great Uncle Luke."

Han watched patiently as she traced the insignia with the tip of one index finger.

"Why do you keep it in the closet?" Hanna asked quietly. Her gaze was no longer the child-like wonder of a few moments before, but that contemplative, thoughtful look again. The one that indicated her gears were turning.

Han shrugged and looked down at it again.

"'Cause it's special," he said gruffly. "Gotta keep it someplace safe, right? So nothing happens to it."

Hanna appeared momentarily distant, and then she turned those piercing eyes back on Han.

"It's special because Grandma gave it to you," she said matter-of-factly. "Not because you were brave."

Han blinked, and then sighed. He wasn't sure if she was using the Force or if she was simply as bafflingly intelligent as her mother and grandmother, but either way, she sure was something. But he frowned thoughtfully, considering. In a way she was right—he didn't keep it as proof of his own valor. And it _was_ terribly significant, that Leia had given it to him. But it was more than that.

"Maybe," Han said slowly. "Think you're right about that one, kid. It's special because the day your grandma gave this to me was..."

How to say it to a five-year-old? It was the moment that Han had finally stepped foot onto the path of his life. The day he'd reached his crossroads. It marked his meeting with Luke and Leia—his beloved brother and the love of his life. It was the beginning of the end of his jaded selfishness, the cataclysmic event that began the erosion of his bitter cynicism, the catalyst that irrevocably changed him. It symbolized triumph over the Empire, yes. It symbolized the turning point for the rebellion, the turning point for him.

The medal symbolized—

"The day your grandma gave this to me was the day I found my family."

At this Hanna beamed, for family was something she could understand.

"I'm your family," she said cheekily—hells, the cheek on this kid. Han grinned back.

"That's right. And this here medal leads right to you."

She giggled like it was silly, but her touch upon the medal remained reverent. Han was seized by sudden decision.

"Hey, tell you what. How about I'll hold onto this for a little while, but someday, when you're a little older, it'll be yours."

Her little hand flew off the medal to cover her mouth.

"Really?"

"Well why not? I know you'll take good care of it, since you know how special it is."

His grandchild appeared to be breathless. Silently, she nodded.

"Good," Han nodded, and with that he lifted her down off the counter and set her back on her feet. "We got a deal then. I'll go put this back to keep it nice and safe, and _you_—" Han passed her the plate with her carefully de-crusted sandwich—"are gonna go eat your lunch. I'll be in big trouble with Mommy and Grandma if they get back and we haven't had lunch yet."

With a conspiratorial smile, the little girl carried her sandwich out to the living room to eat at the caf table—their "spacers' secret," because technically they were supposed to eat in the kitchen, but he figured picnics on the couch with Grandpa wouldn't hurt anyone. Making a note to grab her juice on his way back, Han hurried into his bedroom to stow the medal back in its nondescript case at the back of his closet, which Hanna had left on the floor by the bed. He bent to pick it up, groaning as he did—he was no longer a spry young man by far. But as he set the medal carefully down into its padded, protective case and reflected on all that had come to pass since Leia had hung it around his neck, he smiled a watery smile.

He may have earned a medal that day, but the life he'd built with his Princess was his real treasure. To former-mercenary Han Solo, who at that moment was hurrying back to get his grandkid's juice pouch, it was priceless.


End file.
